Miley Cyrus’s VMA performance was the center of discussion at my family’s Thanksgiving this year, and my Aunt requested that I provide a Christmas story (I wrote one last year that was a big hit)…this was the result.

‘Twas the night before Xmas, sure as reindeer have hooves, and Santa was learning some crazy dance moves.

He popped it and locked it. He did Gangnam Style. He even tried dancing to Skrillex awhile. But for all of his sweating and shaking and jerking, there was one dance he never had done, which was twerking.

Poor naive Santa: until that year’s Winter Ball, he hadn’t know twerking existed at all. He’d mastered the Charleston and the Lindy Hop; he knew how the children all danced to “MMMBop”; he knew Mashed Potatoes, the latest and greatest, and all of those dances he’d learned in Barbados; at the Monster Mash Santa was no amateur; he could Hoedown Throwdown with the best, to be sure; he knew the Sprinkler, the James Brown, the Twist and Dice Shaker, the Cabbage Patch, Moonwalk, Jive, Widowmaker; he knew every move posted to Tumblr or Pinterest (it was his job to stay current with young peoples’ interests). But twerking was something, to Santa, quite new; could there really be a dance move he couldn’t do?

He looked up instructions on YouTube and Reddit, went on Wikipedia to find out who had first said it. He was shocked to discover it’d been out for a while; since the ’90s, at least, had the term been in style. So why were all the papers acting like this was new, invented just for rebellious young white girls to do? On that subject, that Miley, obstreperous foal…he knew someone whose stocking would be filled with coal.

But back to the subject of twerking. You see, for reasons mysterious even to me, be it higher or lower or slower or faster, this was a move Santa just couldn’t master. He lowered his sizeable rump to the floor, then vibrated his hips till his cankles were sore, and his bottom-fat shook like a bowl full of jelly (inadvertently discharging an odor most smelly)…but try as he might, and do what he can, twerking just wasn’t working for this jolly white man.

He called Mrs. Claus in from the kitchen to watch, had her mix him a potion of egg nog and scotch. He even tried doing the move upside down (the result saw Santa sprawled out on the ground). He pulled out all the stops…heard a sickening CRACK…the eager old elf had just thrown out his back!

“Oh no,” he quivered, his voice soft and low, “seems I won’t be performing in the New Year’s Show.”

“Forget New Year’s!” Mrs. Claus bellowed, “you oaf! You’re more useless now than a slimy nut loaf! Just who will deliver the presents, you turd? It’s Xmas tomorrow, or hadn’t you heard?”

“Stop talking like you’re on reality TV,” Santa murmured (acting like he couldn’t see the producers and camera crew crowded around, documenting the fat man sprawled out on the ground). “I’ll do Xmas just like every year, just you wait,” he said, testing how far he could dare shift his weight.

With a wince and a gasp, it was clear to all present that Santa had no business handing out presents, lugging his bulging red sack house to house where no creatures were stirring, not even a mouse. No, Santa would have to put Xmas on hold. “If only you’d done what the doctors had told you to do!” his angry spouse chided. “Now the sleigh is all ready, but who’s going to ride it?”

“It’s part of the contract to do, see and hear everything that’s in fashion with young people this year! And that includes twerking!” the jolly elf shouted. His position was final; there were no bones about it.